Rokugani Tales
by gman391
Summary: In the land of the Emerald Empire, there are many stories of tragedy and triumph. These area few of them
1. Secrets

There are many secrets in this house. Walking through the wooden fixtures and rice paper walls, I can only wonder at them. This house has been your families since...I don't actually know when your family was given this house and this land. It must be at least centuries, centuries of whispered words held close in the darkness.

There are many secrets in this house. Is that why you recoiled from them my husband? Why you a Bayushi born and raised, chose to become a Junshin? I do not know, I just do not know. I would like to think that it is not so; that it was fate that you were what you were. Yet, in my inner heart, the knowledge that it could have been different clings like a painful embrace.

There are many secrets in this house. Secrets like why I married you, our marriage was arranged young as normal yes. But, by the time of your gempukku it was known that you carried bushido in everything you did. Courtesy, Compassion, Courage, Sincerity, Honour, and most damning of all Honesty. So I trained in the ways of the Shoshuro became your wife, and the knife held to your throat should you ever try to harm the clan.

I do not know what I expected upon marrying you. We had met as children and I considered you a smelly boy and no more. When we met again upon marrying I saw man not so handsome as some, nor as strong as some, but who was handsome enough and strong enough. Living with you would not be so bad. Even as I hardened my heart in preparation for a terrible day.

I do not know when I began to fall for you. You were honest, genuine, giving me flowers you knew I liked, not out of an attempt to court me or make me love you, but to make me feel welcome at your home. The first clumsy attempts you made with my body were not pleasant but you soon learned, learned to make me sing. I will not deny enjoying that. Everything you did, you tried to reach me as a friend. I think in trusting me, I had to fall for you, giving me something no other Scorpion would dare, complete trust.

I do not know how you came to know of those secret movements of our people. The shadowy paths that let us move through out the Empire hidden from the magistrates view. However, it did happen and you reacted as a Junshin would, you came to your superiors telling them of this thing and that it would have to stop. Fortunes above why did you do that?

I do know that when I received the message from my superiors of what to do, my heart broke. I was to kill you, kill the man I loved for the clan. There was no way we could trust you with that information, not with what you were. So, the preparations long made would go into affect. I could have poisoned you, should have poisoned you.

I do know why I could not. I couldn't just poison you from afar and spare myself that pain of seeing the life go from your eyes. You had earned the right to know who your killer was. And, I wanted, I wanted to look into your eyes one last time, to feel your embrace, to love you, even as I slew you. So I embraced you a final time. Your heart against mine. The hairpin needle slid out of my kimono sleeve, out of your view. I took it and punctured your spine just where it met the neck. It was the quickest most painless death I could give you like this.

I don't know why as you fell to floor, you whispered "I forgive you"

I can't forgive myself. So why do you forgive me? Because I spared you from making the choice between honour and loyalty? Or something, no it has to be that. I don't dare believe that you loved me enough to forgive me killing you, that isn't something I'll let you put on me. I saved you, I saved you from making that choice. That's how I endure.

As I kneel before your shrine, I feel something in my eyes...tears.

This house holds many secrets, that I sob like a child every night over what I did, is just one more


	2. Memories of Rain

The sound of water falling down from the roof on to the ground in front of me, the feel of burning smoke in my lungs, and taste of tobacco in my mouth, it all brings back memories, memories of a time I looked out at a rainstorm and wondered why it was so heavy.

I heard a story once, that rain is when the Heavens cry for mortals doomed to die and be reborn.

Not sure I believe that story, but then, I'm not really sure I'm the best to ask about the heavens. A bushi, a warrior, a coward and a fraud, that's me, not really someone to talk about Fortunes and spirits.

The days like this, when the rain comes crashing down in sheets of silver-white, drowning anything not smart enough to get under cover? They're the days when I miss her the most.

No, that's not right, it's not that I miss her, the hell of it is that she's maybe half a building away.

I miss what we had. Which is more selfish, but also more accurate.

The start of all this came from me, I was foolish enough to believe that I could say something with my writing. I wasn't making pillow books or anything, but trying to make actual works of literature...plays, anthologies, that sort of thing.

I never really showed them to anyone but they got out all the same. People said they were good, said that they were worth doing, so I did more of them.

There was a sort of comfortable mediocrity there, my writing occasionally brushed something good, but most of the time it was just alright. The talent of the family was my elder brother, so it made perfect sense for him to go to winter court to represent our family.

Then he came down with the fever, the healers didn't think it was serious but it was enough that he'd be snowed in and unable to go to court. So...they sent the next best thing, me. I was to represent us and show off my writing, maybe convince some fancy upper class Samurai that we were worth giving patronage too.

I was never supposed to go to court. Sure, I listened when sensei beat in the rules of the game and everything, but I knew that most of my life would be spent being a simple bushi. It wasn't that I didn't want more, it was that I knew my limits.

Naturally, I was terrified of going to Court, but duty is duty, and so I went.

Disaster is too strong a term for my entrance, but my comfortable mediocrity betrayed me. I couldn't keep up, couldn't move with the court's changing tastes quickly enough. By the time they announced me I was old news. Competing in the challenges didn't help, I did alright but not enough to overshadow the darlings of the court, it was during the Challenge of Words that I was supposed to make my move.

I was nervous, and so to write, I penned a few stories, and left them around anonymously, to see what people thought.

Some thought it was alright, most thought it was purely pedestrian tripe, laid out to lower expectations. Which is a tactic I kind of wished i had thought of at the time.

That cinched it, I was going to doom our family, I wanted to run, to break my fingers, to not write.  
But, that's not what happened. Instead I met Her, I never really knew her name, she just told me to call her Monogotari-san, or Story-san. That was all we both needed. She looked over my scribbled writing as I tried to come up with something anything that would make things right.

She spoke to me, gentled me, pulled out ability I didn't know I had, made my writing better...I didn't realize how much it hurt to have that done. It wasn't that she didn't care, she did, it was that she had no mercy to making a work perfect. Every line, every stroke of the calligraphy pen had to be just so.

But she gave me hope, made me feel like I had a shot of actually being considered good at my art. I never could figure out what she saw in me, but she said that I was too innocent to not like.  
Whenever I pushed, she just hushed me with a finger.

It was a day before the Game of Letters was to begin, that we made love for the first and last time. I was so nervous, so pent up, that I blurted out my feelings in a river of words. I was happy to see her, I was unsure what else I could do, I was grateful that she was with me. I needed her.

To this day, I wonder if the last words I said were what set us to break apart.

'I love you.'

Three words, words of power and subtlety that break the greatest of daimyo and save the weakest of peasants. They did both for me.

I spoke them to her, and meant them. She hushed me again, this time with her lips. We spent the day together, and as she curled into my side during the cold night I wrote. Wrote possibly the greatest work I could ever make, and undoubtedly my downfall.

Sleep kept me from realizing I put that piece for the judging instead of the one I had intended to, the one that Monogotari-san had worked so hard with me, to make. Instead I handed in the one I wrote while still intoxicated by the sensation of being loved and loving back.

I was found to be the best writer, and my work was distributed throughout the court. A patron approached me, an older man. He was semi-retired, letting his son handle much of the duties, but he wanted to give back, and he had never been much of an artist himself.

I agreed to the sponsorship and ran to my Monogotari-san, my beloved.

A proper story would say that I came upon nothing, that she had only been a dream I conjured from stress, a muse. Or perhaps that she had died, giving me inspiration for my work...but that wasn't what happened. She knew what had happened and was happy for me.

Yet as her perfectly crimson lips spoke the words. "Now that you've grown...you can soar," -  
foreboding filled my stomach.

We still courted as couples do, but things changed slightly, as I continued to write frantically for my patron and for her.

Yet, the old smile, the old soft sound of delight, that was gone. In its place were disappointed eyes, and frowns. Finally, Monogotari-san asked why I wasn't giving it my all, my best as I should.

I said I was and she slapped me, saying that I had done better, that if I was truly dedicated to the art, truly dedicated to her, I would make another masterpiece.

I wish that the slap had knocked something loose, had made me a brilliant writer yet again. But that wasn't the case. Instead, I did worse, as I tried to force the words onto the page, to force them into something that was good.

With each failure, light dimmed from Monogotari's eyes, with each failure, my own spirit ebbed.  
No matter how she kept pulling, prodding, urging me to greater heights, I couldn't do it. Worse in her eyes I began to resist, I loved her, but nothing was good enough for her. Resentment that I didn't realize built in my heart.

Finally, as the Winter Court closed, I erupted in a storm of anger at her. At how all she did was break and break, how she didn't want me, she just wanted a puppet who would do what she wanted. How I was nothing more than a distraction and she should just move on.

"As you wish," were the last words she said to me.

The sound in her voice, like a precious crystal slowly crumbling, will haunt me for the rest of my days.

As soon as she left, I regretted it, I chased after her...but she was gone.

So I packed up my things and went to my patron telling him I would join him in two months.  
Then, I went home and explained I had found a patron, and asked for my family's blessing. They gave it, of course.

With that, I left my place of birth, and tried to make a go of it being the pet playwright for my patron. Some of my works were okay, some were good...but none had that brilliance of before.  
My patron asked why I couldn't...and I could only answer that I killed the love between Monogotari and myself.

I looked for her to try to explain that it wasn't her really it was me. She wanted me to be great, but I wasn't like a temple that could build and build until it was the most magnificent thing in the world. I was a brief candle, and she hadn't understood that...but I never explained either. Letting my feelings build up until I hurt her as much as she hurt me in a petty, unrewarding vengeance.

Yet when I found her, all those words just floated away. She was another artist given patronage, and she looked at me, with those eyes of...not hate. Hate would mean that she acknowledged my existence that I was worth hating. No those eyes were well empty, no hate, no love, not even mild acceptance that I was there. Just empty eyes, that blinked at me as I tried to speak.

She had only wanted to help, only wanted to reach out one last time to make things better...but I had thrown it away. She still makes stories, but I've never read them, I can't bring myself to.

So as the rain comes down, and I put tobacco into my pipe and inhale, I miss her, miss what we had. Wishing I had another chance to explain.

To be with her under the sheets of rain again and feel like I was a great man, even if I was only ever a mediocre man.

Maybe in the next life, we'll make it work.


	3. Understandings

The smell of cheap alcohol mixed with food wafted through the air. Matsu Akane had better places to be than here, better things to be doing. Yet she was here, to find the man who insulted her and punch his face in.

The door opens with a small creak, as Akane walks into the seedy inn. Every step forceful, powerful proclaiming for all the world that she was a Samurai. The inn itself was a typical in found on the outskirts, it was for those whose dignity was nonexistent, and just wanted a place to stay.

A badly strummed biwa stops as Akane continues past the poor doorman without even glancing at him, he was beneath notice. No there was only one person here that Akane could see as worth her time.

There sitting at the back, in a languid half reclined pose sat Kakita Motonari. His white hair was splayed out, as he drank from a saucer of sake.

Akane took another step, her finely honed body that could break most men with one hand loomed in the room.

Motonari's blue eyes met hers.  
"Matsu Akane-sama...I would think you had better places to be than here." The Kakita says shifting his position so that he could bow.

"You know why I am here, Kakita-san.":

A flash of emotion across those far too pretty eyes.  
"Let's take it outside...I like this place."

"Running won't do any good." Akane snarls.

"Matsu-san have I ever run from you?"Motonari said wryly.

Akane only snorts in response.

The two samurai leave the main room onto the street. The cold autumn wind blows down the avenue as the full moon hangs overhead.

Motonari tilts his head in question, Akane nods.  
No swords, jiujutsu only.

The two slide into martial art stances. Akane's low, powerful, meant to use her core to the best of her abilities. Motonari's is more slim, graceful, to be the wind not the earth.

Akane strikes first, her fist surging towards, Motonari's face, to end this in a knock out blow.

Motonari flows around it, spinning down her arm before swinging his backhand against Akane's temple.

Akane's elbow pushes out forcing Motonari away from her.  
Her other hand reaches out and pulls him by the back of his neck into a wall.

Motonari swings his legs backwards, so that his feet hit the wall first. \  
He pushes off it a knee aimed for her chest.

The Matsu slams her hands together catching the knee between them.  
She raises the caught knee up intending to slam her opponent into the ground.

The Kakita launches a quick, weak kick out, slapping his sandal across her face.  
First blow struck.

Akane drops the knee and roars as she gives a brutal headbutt to Motonari.  
The second blow struck.

Motonari staggers a bit before shaking it off and again standing in a fighting stance.

"Why are you so worked up?"Motonari asks.

Akane's _on_ does nothing to suppress the death glare.  
"You missed my wedding"

Something sags out of Motonari as his hands fall.  
"Oh…"

He bows to her  
""My apologies to you Matsu-sama, I was unfit to attend such an august event"

"I invited you personally, in my own hands...and you rejected me" Akane says.

Motonari's eyes widen, as the hurt in Akane's voice filters through air.

"It wasn't like that."

"Then what was it like Motonari?" Akane asks softly,

Kakita Motonari looks back at the seedy inn, and then at her.

"Do you really want to know?"

"Yes"

Motonari sighs looking up at the fool moon.  
"I didn't go to your wedding Akane, because it should have been me."

Akane blinks owlishly as she tries to process her best friend's words.  
"What? I don't…"

The Kakita looks straight into her eyes.  
"I should have been the one wearing the white robes and marrying you."

A small sensation curls in Akane's gut. Not satisfaction surely, that her friend, her enemy wanted her to be his wife?

"But...why Motonari-san?"

A soft bitter chuckle.  
"It's insane isn't it, we've fought on countless battlefields, your spear has drunk my blood even as my sword marked your body...but in spite of all of that…"

Akane's face is still as a board as she holds back the trepidation, the worry that gnaws at her.  
He won't say it, he can't say it.

"I love you Akane."

Four words, four words that echo across the empty street. Four words that ring in Akane's ears louder than any tako drum. Four words that are shattering her comfortable world. Four words she can't accept.

"TAKE IT BACK!" Akane throws a punch.

Motonari shifts his head, as the fist of an angry Matsu shatters the wooden wall behind him.

"I can't, I won't lie, not to you"

"You can't love me!" Akane shouts throwing another punch.

Motonari dodges another punch.  
"I do Akane, Heaven's help me I do."

"No, you can't throw away your heart on me!" Akane screams trying to headbutt the infuriating Crane.

"...What?"

Akane isn't sure where the words come from.  
So she doesn't answer.

This time it's Motonari's turn to go on the offensive. The Kakita grabs Akane's wrists and swings her around into an unruined part of the wall. Holding her arms above her, Motonari steps forward, they're close enough to kiss, close enough to hear each other's heartbeats.

"Akane...loving you isn't throwing my heart away."

Akane tries to shift out of the grip but Motonari knows her too well, blocking her escape with his elbow.

"...Yes it is you baka, I'm married, I can't...I can't give you what you deserve. I can't be your wife, I can't take you to my bed and give you children." She whispers.

"I know...but you are still the most strong, beautiful...passionate woman I have met…" Motonari whispers back.

"But it can never work. I am married to a good, strong, honourable man, it's a match that my ancestors can be proud of...I won't shame them."

"I know you wouldn't. You'd die before you broke your honour...and if that wasn't true, I wouldn't be in love with you. I'm not asking you to leave Matsu Tadahiro-san, I know that he's a fine samurai...but he's not me, and to my heart that's unacceptable."

"Baka.." Akane says, without heat.

Taking a deep breath, Akane looks at her...well she didn't know what he was.  
That feeling in her stomach was warm, happy, but the rest of her was in despair over his revelation.

"Why me?" she asks.

It's a fair enough question. Motonari is handsome in that classical Crane way, long hair, deep soulful blue eyes, a face that's just harsh enough to be masculine without losing its appeal. Realistically, her...friend, her...something, could have any woman he wanted.

"Because you understand me, like no one else...that's all there is to it." Motonari says.

His blue eyes blink, holding back the immense sadness that she knows he feels. How she knows is never in question, because Motonari is right, Akane knows him.  
Knows his hopes, his dreams, knows that he made war his art and was magnificent at it. Yet, for all his skill for all his virtue Motonari would never rise high in the Kakita, too warlike, too Lion for his kin. He could have any woman he wanted...but none of them would truly be with him in spirit, not like she would be.

She can't give him relief, she can't proclaim that the feeling of joy in her stomach is love.

All Akane can say is,  
"...I'm sorry Motonari."

"What's done is done...maybe in the next life." Motonari whispers.

He lets go of her arms and turns to leave.

In a story, Akane would say to Fu Leng with it, and grab him by the collar and kiss him soundly.  
But as Akane watches her soul mate leave, she knows this is no story, there will be no stolen kiss here.

Just an empty night and husband who she knows will never quite match up to the man that her heart holds most dear.

Matsu Akane, one of the fiercest Bushi in the East, leaves the street back to her room.  
There in the darkness as she reflects on what she learned...she notices that roof needs fixing. The water on her face had to come from a leak.


	4. One Last Smoke

The feeling of burning smoke fills his lungs, pungent tobacco filters through the air as he breathes the smoke out. His lips rest on the well worn pipe that had served him for years.  
Dark eyes watch as the sun sets over the horizon, bathing the city in orange, red and purple.

Another moment, another sharp burning sensation to remind himself where he is. It was too easy now to dwell in the past, to see the world with murky eyes, nostalgic for a memory.

But that memory was never so pure as the moment, the nostalgia never lasted, not really.  
Yet as the smoke drifts into the night sky toward the silver moon, he can still see them, his memories, dancing in tendrils of ash.

Of being a young man in his prime, but unsure and unsteady, looking for a truth that didn't exist.  
Of seeing his love standing in the square, hiding herself behind a mask.

They say it gets easier, easier to remember. They're right, it gets easier to remember, the good and the bad, as the good fades, and the bad becomes a treasured scar.

A worn smile graces his lips, curling around the wooden pipe, as he watches the stars come out. Each one had a story, once he had known them all, and told them with the boisterous cheer that made him famous.

Did they understand the power of a story? That truth in the story wasn't about whether it happened, but whether it was real in your soul. To move the multitudes with a story was no easy task, but it was one which had the greatest impact. He doesn't know if they understood, even his children…

Ah the arrogance of old age, if you lived to old age, to doubt your youngers, to question them, to push them to be better than even you were. If that was possible, he liked to think it wasn't. Not that he wouldn't lambast them for not trying anyways.

His teachers had done the same to him and filled him with such vinegar, that even now, he was the only one to tell the boy that he needed to grow up. The only other one who would….well she was gone, and with her most of the boy's heart.

Not that he can blame the boy, not really. His own heart got hollowed out years ago, oh he still loved women, and he'd never found himself unable to have a willing companion for the evening...but those who were willing to stand up to him and see through his stories were all too few.

He takes a deeper breath as the last of the tobacco flies up into the night.  
And now the boy was going to be all alone. Much as he might wish otherwise, living to this age hadn't come about from lying to himself, about himself...on occasion but not to himself.

Closing his eyes for the last time, he watches his life play out again.  
Of meeting the only woman he could ever marry in this city.  
Of her choosing someone else because he was a no account ruffian  
Of him living his life trying to run away from the pain.  
Of learning to live with it.  
Of meeting the boy.  
Of meeting the boy's love and seeing it play out all over again.  
Of watching the boy become a man in his own right.  
Of growing older and older, even as he stayed at the boy's side.

It wasn't a perfect life.  
But he could say it was a good one...and he no longer held any regrets.

Akodo opened the door on to the balcony. Why did the old man have to be here?  
Not that he hated his sister's lands...it was just there was so much to do, running a Clan was way too much work.

"Migite, it's time to come back home." he calls.

There's no answer.  
"Migite?"

Still no answer from the old man.

"Ikoma?" Akodo's voice is hesitant now.

Nothing. The kami walks over towards the old man, and listens.  
There's no breath, no warmth, no signs of life.

"...Ikoma" Akodo says shaking the body gently.

The man is dead, Akodo knows that, but he doesn't want to admit it, to admit that the last of his true companions has passed away. So he shakes the body saying the name of his last follower. It's useless, he knows that, but he keeps trying, until at last he gives up. Turning away to look up at the heavens, he is loyal to them, and to his family...but that loyalty is tested by cruelty such as this however necessary. The moon drifts down to the horizon when Akodo finally turns away.

Akodo does not cry. He is too proud, too stubborn for that, but to the end of his days. A small wooden pipe is never far from his chest. Just as the words of the man who challenged him, raised him, are never far from his thoughts.


	5. Homecoming

I was seven years old when I left home for the first time.

It wasn't to go to a dojo like you'd expect, although I did end up learning a lot from my journey. No, it was to seal a peace treaty. I was a hostage - if my father was to declare war, my life was forfeit.

I didn't want to go, I wanted to stay, to learn from my parents, from my family, to become a great warrior in the family style, one that had been used since the time of the Shining Prince centuries ago.

But it was my duty. And so on a cold, gray autumn morning, in a lonely village that straddled the borders of our lands, I left my family for the last time.

My fellow hostage also left, walking towards me with her head tall, radiating pride. I didn't even realize she was a girl, her hair was so short. I don't know what possessed me to smile at her as we walked past each other, but I did, and she smiled back. That was the last smile I really saw until I came home.

-  
I was ten years old when I found myself standing on the edge of the castle walls.

They would say that I was just looking over them in awe, and to be honest it was an impressive sight, a man made mountain shaped to our needs. Yet, I didn't climb the walls to marvel at them. I climbed them because I was pushed to my limits, and I wanted out. I didn't think I could go further.

My captor was...a good man I think, strong, capable, a father to his men. But he didn't know the meaning of restraint not when it came to training. Every day he pushed me past every limit I thought I had, forcing me to confront my weakness, to try and be as enduring as the mountains themselves. But I wasn't born of the Earth, nor moulded by it since I could walk. I was born of the air to move around the mountain, not be it.

So I climbed to the top of that castle wall and looked out, wondering if I could come down. If I had anything left to give for this training, for the treaty itself.

Looking towards my homelands, towards where my family was, I wondered if the girl I had seen, was feeling like I was, someone trapped into a role they didn't want, and was in no way suited for. Did she want to be home, to see her father and mother? To marvel at her newest sibling's apparently bottomless appetite?

If I failed to complete my training, if I fell down from here and died...she'd never get to do any of that, my father would never believe that my death wasn't a murder. No he'd assume I had been pushed, and with it the treaty would end and the girl who had smiled at me would die.  
I couldn't do that to her, to make it so that she would never go home. Not when she had to be going through what I was, even if different forms...I couldn't give up, not when she wouldn't give up on me.

There was no real basis to believe that, but her smile, that small, hopeful thing, made me believe it.

-  
I was thirteen years old when I went south.

Yes, I was a hostage, yes I was to be protected, but the only way to graduate from my captor's dojo was to fight. So they sent me to a battle and I fought. There was terror in my bones, I had been taught how to live, how to survive.

The thing is that, doing something in the dojo, is different from doing it in reality. To stand outside in the line of battle with no sensei to guide you. To look at the foe, and feel in your bones that they want to kill you no matter what. Its enough to make anyone afraid.  
To be afraid is to fail as a Samurai...but that didn't make me not afraid. I had to push it aside, gather my courage, and move past it.

The battle was a chaotic mess. People around me died as the Old Foe forced the wall. It was twenty against two hundred. It was suicide. But, my commander just laughed and said that the last one to a hundred got the first round.

I should have died there, too many of the Crab died there beside me. Yet my captor's training had was comprehensive, and while Samurai around me died, I lived, and as my compromise between a tetsubo and a sword (A big nodachi like thing that would make an Ashikada cry at it's bastard merging of the two) took the first life in the battle, I lost myself.

We were saved by the Hiruma at the last moment, and somehow I came to with an ogre war leader on the ground dead. My captor almost seemed impressed.

-  
I was seventeen years old when I returned home.

Again, a cold autumn day was the setting, although the sun was shining this day. We again found ourselves at a small village straddling the borders between our lands.

This time though, there was no way to mistake her as a boy. She was graceful, refined...taller than me, but still unmistakably a woman.

And so I walked away from the man who trained me, from where my home had been for the last ten years. Towards my family, my parents, my younger brothers, my cousins.

Again I walked by her, and again we smiled at each other.

I wonder even know if those smiles meant more to me than they ever did to her, I can't know really. A part of me hopes that just like her smile helped me remember I wasn't alone, my smile helped her.

Regardless we walked past each other to our 'true homes'.

-  
I am eighteen years old now.

It's a warm spring day in spite of the snow on the ground. My father has retired at long last to enjoy his life in the monastery. I am now heir, despite my mother campaigning for my younger more proper brother to take the position.

No, I don't blame her. I'm not the son she sent away all those years ago. I watch the way people move, I think about how to bust open a wall with my bare fists if I have to. There's a distance between me and everyone else that I can't breach no matter what.

I know the forms, the way I should be. I even act it, but it's not natural. The need to think, to reason my way towards what I have to do, it sets me apart, even if only my family can see it.

But above all else, my mind is on the issue of my wife to be. My status of being a hostage has understandably made it rather hard for the Nakado. Yet now, I find...that none of them truly suit. Oh there's nothing wrong with their lineage, and they're quite lovely in their own way. But I can see in their eyes, their eyes that they see me as inferior. I cannot go to war leaving behind a wife who would undermine everything I worked for.

My mind sets on the woman I walked past a year ago, she was tall, graceful, but by the standards of the Crane...not particularly beautiful. Yet...to end the feud, and perhaps to find someone who understands…

It's ultimately a selfish desire, but I can't deny it.

I will pen a letter to her and her father on the issue of her marriage.

 _-Personal Journal of Doji Benjiro_


	6. Masks

I walk down the street, moving through the crowds. The warm wind caresses my bare face in the evening light. It feels strange to have something touch that skin after so long, I had always been careful to keep it looking natural, always. Yet, at the same time, I find that I missed it, my mask - it hadn't been elaborate like some bushi go for. It hadn't been a gauzy thing that insults masks by existing. Just a simple white mask shape like a woman's face. It had been my armor, my protection, time and time again.

Now it was burning in the alley three blocks back. I was free...I was lost...I was safe...I had never been in more danger.

Conflicting thoughts, conflicting ideals.

The Scorpion say we wear masks to remind everyone that we're all liars, that we all show a false face to the people we interact with. That what you see is but an illusion made for the good of society and that it isn't the true person underneath.

For most there's some truth to that.

For me it had always been the other way around. When I take the mask off, when I look in the mirror, I don't know who that person is. The mask was who I was, the mask was Shosuro Akira.

Shosuro Akira is dead now. He has to be after what happened this night.

There's one more purpose to the masks that even most Scorpion don't understand anymore. It's our last, final line of defence. Or it's supposed to be anyway. A barrier between you and your true face, when things go horrifically wrong and you can't be a Scorpion anymore not without harming your Clan. You take it off and walk away.

That's the purpose it served today. As I walk through the streets, bumping into rich merchants and lifting their purses without them realizing. Like it or not my sensei had prepared me well to go rogue.

Going Rogue. Those two words were some of the vilest curses, a Scorpion could argue. Those who did so, had no mercy given to them. A special place in the Grove of Traitors existed just for them.

Yet that was what I was now. I can't even regret it, I made the right choice.

Samurai patrol.

I dip into the nearest noodle shop, sitting down, looking all the world, like a simple ronin looking for a meal. I order miso ramen and tea, while counting the steps as the Scorpion patrol goes by.

The sound of metal on metal echoes in my ears, as the bowl of noodles comes down in front of me, I bring out the cheap bamboo chopsticks, give thanks and begin to eat.

Sloppy, too loud. Sensei would have had them doing the bell test over and over for that.

They're looking for me, well they're looking for someone like me.

Tonight the daimyo of Ryoko Owari died.

Tonight I betrayed my clan, my wife, my children, everything, for the Empire.

Tonight I stopped being a Shosuro Akira

Now I'm...hmm, I dunno...Taka? Yeah that will work for now.

I don't regret what I did. Shoshuro Masatane was a madman, a well connected one, but a madman nonetheless. No matter what you feel, you can't plan to hire maho tsukai to raise your daughter from the grave.

But, I acted without orders, defied my duty to the Scorpion to obey, but kept my duty to the Empire.

Loyalty, it's always a question.

I made my choice, I don't regret it.

I look into my tea, the face looking back is too smooth to be a lifelong ronin, too smooth indeed.

I needed a new mask, one carved into my face.

The irony of it all draws a chuckle.

Bayushi-no-kami is right, we all lie about ourselves...I'm just more literal about it.


	7. Last First Kiss

Loud thwacks echo in the cold morning air. The sound of flesh on wood as she punches the tree yet again.

Breathe in, breath out, release.

The steady rhythm of simulated violence is enough to sooth her troubled mind.  
It wasn't supposed to be this way.

She was just supposed to do her duty and no more. Maybe be friends with him if he was an alright sort. Ikoma Yukio knew how to handle that. To make the marriage of convenience work. Love wasn't the question.

And yet here she is punching a tree yet again like she used to do when she was a child.

She wasn't supposed to actually like him.

She wasn't supposed to want to see him up close, to hold his hands and hear his voice.

"I'm a terrible person," she whispers to herself.

Spent, she leans her forehead against the broken bark to rest. Letting the cold winter air burn inside as she breathes.

Unbidden thoughts come back of the past. Of the promise to another.

"Kei-kun, I still love you, I just have to do my duty is all."

Liar.

Aoba had been a surprise betrothal, as the the fourth daughter she hadn't been particularly useful in their family, especially given her lack of aptitude for the traditional family art of spear use. In many ways that had suited Yukio.

And then her sister got killed leading a glorious charge to kill more Crane as befitting the Lion idiom. Agreements had been made, and Yukio, unwed fit the requirements.

So she met Ikoma Aoba. Not a gentle man, with those rough strong fingers that showed his own experiences at upholding the Ikoma art of jiujutsu. Except arond her he was. Knowing that she had had her freedom snatched away by chance.

And in spite of herself, Yukio found herself falling for him. He wasn't perfect, enjoying far more sake than she would like, but he tried, he gave her poetry, and not because he was trying to win her over, he made it clear that he wouldn't try that, but because he wanted to.

But where did that leave her? A faithless woman?

She had promised Kei-kun that even if she had to get married, he still held her heart, and that come next winter court they would meet again and it would be as it was.

Except it wouldn't.

The Ancestors were pretty clear on what to do, as was Akodo-no-kami.  
So why did it feel wrong to betray him like this?

Memories of the past hours flickered by. Of her in the garden practicing ikebana.

"I know about him."

Yukio gave a start and turned around to see Aoba. She bowed low.

"Honoured husband, I..."

"About the one you intended to marry."

"Hai, honoured husband." She said softly.

"I was aware that I did not hold your heart. So I looked into who did hold it."

Yukio, didn't know how to respond, she settled for nodding.

"I am not familiar with what a woman looks for in a man, but he is...a fine catch going by reports."

"Hai honoured husband."

"You are without child, yes?"

Yukio winced.  
"My apologies."

"No apologies."

A raven cawed to break the silence.

"What does my honoured husband wish?"

"That depends on my honoured wife. Does she wish...to be with him? Instead of me?"

And she had had no answer for that. Yukio had begged time to think.

Which led her back to here. This should be everything she wanted, and yet...and yet.

Kei-kun, her first love, the one that believed in her, grew with her, the fire to hers so they both burned brightly.

Aoba-kun, her husband, who supported her, trusted her, water to her fire but water that refused to put her out.

There isn't a right answer. She'd made promises to both. Both wanted her to be happy, and she would be happy with either.

Yukio turned around to look at the sky.  
"Dammit Aoba why did you have to force it like this?'

She would have been happy not choosing really. To love them both if slightly differently.

But he is offering to let her go with no loss, she could marry Kei-kun and have adorable babies together.

But she could stay with Aoba, and have adorable babies together.

Adorable babies won't solve the problem, no matter how her mother prods for grandchildren before she retired.

Closing her eyes, Yukio breaths, meditation wasn't the Lion way really, but you pick up some things when you're in Shiro Kitsuki for a few months.

Fire, Water, Earth, Air, Void.

Balance

Emptying her mind was hard, but as she breathes in and out, the world drifted out of her consciousness. Lining up the two men, their flaws, their strengths. Them.

Her breath catches as she finishes. Kei-kun...

Kei-kun is fire to her, intoxicating to touch to listen to. She burns with passion around him. Yet, yet, he hasn't written to her since the marriage. Yes to protect her he said, from what though Aoba while not exactly the most open of men never raises his voice.

Aoba's anger is there - she has seen him let lose with a servant that had knocked over a priceless vase gifted to his family by a Unicorn or something years ago. That had been violent, but it had been quick and for all his anger. Aoba had shown more restraint than she would have.

Fire, Water, Earth, Air, Void

Balance

The comparison of the two men runs around her mind in a circle even as the elements do. Yet there is no respite for her.

Yukio shivers, and a blanket settles over her shoulders. Surprised she opens her eyes. Aoba is there, his face as impassive as ever.

She had promised Kei-kun.

Her hands reach out for her husband.

She broke that promise months ago.

As the fading sun falls on them both, they embrace.

"Honoured...Aoba-kun, I'm a terrible woman." Yukio whispers, feeling the warm arms around her.

"Why do you say that?" Aoba asks his own voice soft.

Yukio can feel him stiffen. Her arms tighten their grip.

"Because I promised another that he would always have my heart, and I can't."  
She swallows.

"I can't do that anymore."

"Yukio-san?"

"I can't say he has my heart, because you do...I understand if you don't want a fickle woman like me to be your wife."

Aoba stares at her for a long moment. She can feel his dark eyes searching her soul, and she stares back. Her pride won't let her back down even if the creeping feeling in her gut tells her to.

Slowly, Aoba takes one hand and pushes back her hair. It's a slow and awkward first kiss, but to Yukio it's perfect.


	8. Quiet Partings

_Cold summer day hurts_  
 _Warm winter memory soothes_  
 _As we part our ways_  
-Anonymous Haiku

The sound chanting finishes, and I watch the priest speak. Words too familiar float past his lips. A dreamed memory of a different life babbles through my mind. Like everyone else I put on a polite applause as you marry him.

I'm not so arrogant or selfish to demand that it should have been me. It should have been me walking with you towards the happy guests. You love each other, I can see that.

Truth be told I don't know why I'm here watching this. You'll never hear my words, I can't do that to you. To make you wonder what could have been like I do. Maybe this is just a farewell to my past. Well that or the sake talking.

Do you remember how we met so long ago? Of two young children meeting at the winter court for the first time?

The thing that I always remember is this snow, and you teaching me how to make a snowball. We were kids I didn't love you then. But you were one of those rare girls that my seven year old brain decided were 'not gross'. I wonder what you thought of me.

So every winter when the festivals came and our sensei let some semblance of warmth through and gave us permission to meet our families at the castle. We would try to find each other again. It didn't always happen, but often enough that by our gempukku, we were friends. Friends who only knew each other Yuki-chan and Aoi-kun, but friends all the same.

If I had to point to when I first saw you as more than just Yuki-chan bringer of fun, I'd say it was that first winter court after our gempukku. You moved differently somehow, or I just realized it. But you were beautiful, and as per my sempai, I attempted to court you.

It was a complete disaster, I can look back and admit that. Those haiku, that flower, what was I thinking?

But you laughed and said okay anyways.  
I thought I could take on the world in that moment. We were still just Yuki-chan and Aoi-kun with each other. But walking under the cold winter nights, holding hands, even now I feel like those were some of the most intimate moments I ever had.

We agreed to continue this at the next court.

Next court neither of us came. Both sent out to fight and die for our clans. I don't know what happened there, and to be honest I don't want to know. What I do know is you came back changed. So did I. We tried, Fortune's know we tried, but we needed different things.

You, you broke it off, and in that moment I wondered why I fought so hard to come back. I won't lie and say I didn't grow obsessed with you. My words and mind stayed focused on you, tracking you as you drifted through life.

Which leads us to now. I heard you were getting married. You know the crazy thing is that I tracked both of you down, and was prepared to surprise you both and give this big dramatic speech.

Yet, I saw you both in that garden of stone and flowers, not saying anything, you didn't need to, you both radiated this joyful contentment.

In that moment realized that we both had different things for each other. That my choices had pushed you away. So I slipped away that day not saying anything. And I'll do the same today, I'll slip away Yuki-chan...because I love you still.

And because I love you, your smile today means more than the pain I feel. He makes you happy, and that is more important than my own happiness.

Arigato Yuki-chan for everything.

-

I walk down the aisle, in red and white my beloved by my side. My eyes scanning the assembled people to find my friends and family mixed with his. The warmth I feel in my cheeks is partially from him and partially at how many seem to wish me well.

Of course there was one I wanted more than any other. My first love, I hadn't invited you, but somehow, I knew you would come. Maybe I hoped, for closure or something.

The memory of us first meeting so long ago under winter skies still remains precious to me. You were so serious, so...utterly and comically serious that I couldn't help but see someone who desperately needed my cheering up. So I threw a snowball at you.

You threw it back thus falling into the category of boys who aren't jerks to my young mind. We played together as often as we dared during that court. Yuki-chan and Aoi-kun.

Sensei always did encourage us to live as well as train, so every winter it became tradition for us to try and find each other and just live a little. Growing all the while.

Truth be told you were a gawkly angly teenager, not the man you are today. I'm getting married to the most handsome man in the world, but I'm not so blind to not give you your due as handsome in your own right.

Gawky and gangly you might have been, but you were sweet. Terrible poetry and flowers and all I knew you did it entirely on your own, and I was charmed...puppy love really. But that court was still magical, and I couldn't wait for the next one.

Then we marched for war, and thoughts of love fell apart as I found myself in the mud and blood of the battlefield. I don't even know why we went to war, but I trust that there was a good reason. Enough to seem my squad killed, enough for a reason why.

Whatever the reason I came back changed, what we had seemed, childish, I want to mature to be well a young woman who had seen war and was trying to cope. You wanted to go back to the way things were, and Fortune's know I can't blame you for that.

But it wasn't what I could give, so I did the only thing I could, I broke it off, and the look on your face was one of the most painful things I saw even with the war.

I left, I left you, I left that life, content to just go through the motions serving wherever I was sent. It felt empty, no one really was trying to understand, and despite it all I still loved you.

Then he came, not loudly but quietly. Never intruding but just being there, my beloved slipped through the emptiness to understand without judging. To help me cope. I struggled with my feelings for him and you for a long time. But in the end, when he confessed his feelings, all I could say was yes.

I haven't regretted it since.

One thing I do miss though is your company, your friendship. In the end though I think what you taught by that is why this marriage will work. I have to be able to give and take...not only give.

You think I don't see you as you leave. I do, I know you Aoi-kun, that you're in pain, and a part of me still desperately wishes to change that. The gentle squeeze on my hand reminds me why I can't.

Because as much as I love you, it's not the kind of love where a man and woman embrace in heated passions. It's the kind where you do what is right to help both of you. The kind where you let go so that life can grow. I know it hurts right now, I do, it still hurts me. But I know you, and I know that one day, we'll be friends again, neither of us hurt.

Thank you Aoi-kun for everything.


	9. Aftermath of a Love Affair

Eyes stare up at the wooden ceiling above. Exhausted mind traces the grains of timber, praying desperately for sleep. Yet, there is no sleep this night. No sweet oblivion where the ache, the pain is gone. There is just the sounds of the night echoing through the room.

Turn over look at the empty space where a beloved once lay, a soft smile and comforting touch enough to send the dark thoughts tumbling away. No longer does that warm joy dance across the skin. That joy ended, strangled by chains stronger than steel. Chains of honour, of purpose of pride, chains that bound you the day you were born.  
Regret is a sin they say, and one wonders why they say that. Is it because it draws one away from the purpose they were born to that they did not choose? Or is it because to feel regret is to acknowlege the humanity locked away behind a pleasant face with no smile or frown.

Cold wind blows and even with the blankets one shudders a little. Nights like these when the moon is quiet and the animals sing mournfully, nights like these you stare up at the ceiling and wonder was it worth it?

Night like these you don't let yourself hear the answer.  
-

Turn around, arm comes down on the too soft futon. Bleary memory comes back, your heart isn't there. The one who loved you and you loved back. No longer does their scent fill the room in the morning grey before the dawn. No longer does the quiet noise of farewell embraces and kisses serve as the jolt to wake.

You want to hate, to rage to scream at your beloved sending you away. Yet, you know why, because the needs you two shared were too great too open to continue. The mingling of passionate fire, laughing wind, calming water and enduring earth into a magnificent whole. Yet one that was not looked for, one that could not be condoned. A code forged by the gods condemned your actions, and at long last it had to end.

Desire is the sin everyone understands, there is no question why it is a sin. For what does desire do but lead one astray. It led you astray so many times, yet you know that if your beloved were to come to you again, you would indulge the sin over and over. Now isn't that a funny thing, to desire to be desired, to be held and touched with true emotion that burns as it heals? Yet you do not deny it, you hide it beneath a painted face and mask crafted from hours of practice; but do not deny it.

The songbirds sing and a lost blanket pushes you awake. The sun struggles to rise. It is not the nights that you struggle with, no, those are mercifully short as you drink poppy juice through your mouth. It is the dawn that you struggle with another day without love, another day you ask yourself if you can do this.

Another day where you lie to yourself so you can.


	10. Simple Choices

Discovered Letter

S _oft wind on my skin, reminders of the past coming back. In front of me are wide plains of grain, the sun setting them alight in a kaleidoscope of colours. I suppose that there is nothing more to be said as the falling leaves crunch on the ground._

 _As memories of another night like this, where you traced your hands over my skin come back. I wonder about you. In spite of everything, I do wonder about you, we nearly killed each other, but maybe, maybe that was the only way we could reach out to each other._

 _By ancient tradition what happens at the Winter Court stays there. Whatever friendships are forged, enemies found, and love bound in honest pledge...it's ephemeral like a dream. Oh the feelings are still there, the beating of your heart as you think of them is still there. You just aren't allowed to act like it matters so much...al of these things are to be resolved one way or another. The bonds cut as we return to our homes, if we're lucky, if we're blessed, we get to see each other again to do it all over again._

 _Most of us aren't that lucky. Most of us get to go to true Winter Court, once or twice, and that will be the highlight of our lives. Which I suppose is why I'm like this, because I see you, in my mind's eye I see you just coming into the Winter Court. Your hair perfect, your clothes arranged for masterful effect, eyes already sweeping the room for all the careful cues that will let you win the court._

 _For a long time,_

 _Truth was, that what we shared was never more than a simple affair, a dalliance to pass the time. You never lied to me, never pretended that it was anything other than that. I lied to myself because I wanted, needed more. Needed to believe I was wanted for something that was me alone. When that truth was reaffirmed, I broke inside, to hear that all my hopes, all my dreams everything I had pinned to you was all in my head, I couldn't handle it._

 _Even now, I'm surprised that I didn't end up being ordered to cleanse my shame, given what I did. I tried to hurt you as much as you hurt me, but you gave as good as you took, in the end, I was exiled, and now..._

 _Now I think I understand why you pushed me away when you did. It was never that you didn't care about me. You did after a fashion, it was that you knew your place, and you knew no matter what I wanted, that there wasn't space for me there. Not, because you hated the idea of it, but because the court would end, and our paths had to, must diverge._

 _I used to ask myself, why Doji-no-kami invented the concept of a Courtly Affair. Why a kami would ever want to have anyone go through what we went through. To fall so hard only to break, what sense is there in that?_

 _Maybe, maybe, she saw the love as worth the pain. That to live as people, we had to have a way to reach out beyond the bonds of friendship or family. Something that couldn't be granted with marriages arranged as they were...maybe...she just wanted all of us to have a chance to love, however brief it has to be._

 _I think the truth is though, that she wanted us to learn love is a choice we make-_

The sun sets in full as the samurai looks up from his writing table. In front of him, his wife stands holding a single lantern.

"Who are you writing to?" She asks her husband.

The husband looks up from the letter, and shakes his head.

"Just someone I once knew."

"Oh..." She says softly.

Unspoken is that she knows who her husband writes to, who has captured his heart and soul for years, and that it is not her. That no matter how hard she tries, she's just a simple country Samurai like him, not someone that her husband could fall for. What is unknown to her, is the pain that echoes in her voice. That catches her husband's ear.

The samurai reads over the last of his letter. Quietly he stands up and folds the letter into a small origami crane.

"Husband what are you doing?" She asks.

"Making a choice" He says softly.

With that he waits for another wind to blow, and throws the crane into it, letting it go at long last. She looks at him confused, until he lowers the lantern and pulls her into an embrace. He has a lot to make up for her...but he will make the simple choice.


End file.
